


footsteps of giants

by encroix



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>every warrior has a story. this is hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	footsteps of giants

**Author's Note:**

> For the war stories ficathon. Prompt was _i was meant to be a warrior, please / make me a hercules_

The heroes are the ones the stories are written about. The ones with the songs. The women in long sleeved robes and sorrows that wind through hair dark as night, the men who carry burdens on their shoulders that feel like swords. There are battles. There are songs.  
  
There is singing.  
  
The heroes, those are the ones you like to read about best. And, in the end, did you…  
  
When it came down to it, do you think that was a destiny? Or were you a casualty of some other nameless force? The universe in its madness?   
  
A city torn to pieces and what you remember are the old songs your mother never sang you to get you to sleep.  
  
(She is asleep now. A whole city, asleep.)  
  
-  
  
There are entire lists of reasons why he doesn't allow you to pilot a Jaeger. He doesn't give them to you. He doesn't need to. Here is the man that scooped you out of the dust and told you that everything was all right; here is the man that saved you; here is the man that still saves you. When the nightmares press in on you from all sides and you feel trapped in that alleyway again, choking on dust and ash and your own grief, he is always there, his large arm a weight against your shoulders.  
  
There is a hope. There is tomorrow. There is the weight of his arm on your frame and you remember.  
  
The war gets better; the war gets worse; Stacker remains a constant, and you trust -- you _know_ to guide by him always.  
  
That is another lesson you've learned over time. One that has never been proven wrong.  
  
-  
  
The first time you step into the suit is like nothing else you have ever imagined. (And you _have_ imagined, haven't you? Have dreamt about the moment when you would be able to stare down your own monsters, the shadows that chase you down empty streets and shriek like the spirits mother warned you about. Or did she tease you? Or have you forgotten?  
  
But you remember the street. You remember the light weight of the shoe in your hand, the feel of the stones poking through your thin socks to scratch at your heels, the endless screaming of metal and the monsters.  
  
You were young enough to believe in monsters still, and there they were, writ large, chasing after you because you had done something. Hadn't you? Monsters only ever chased after people that had angered them, or was that spirits - but you found a hideaway and you prayed and you sobbed and you still remember the taste of that street, the smell of wet garbage, the blood pulsing in your throat, your face stinging from tears. You still remember, and you want…) The images flood back, crisp and clean, and you are back; you have a shot; you have your chance -   
  
You curl your fist and you prepare to knock at the beast with all that you have. What have you had before? You were a small, light girl - a child - hiding from something bigger. Now you are big. Now you can strike.  
  
-  
  
They stop you. They say _more control, mako_ ; they say _the first time is always bad for everyone_. Drifting, it turns out, is something that must be done with absolute focus and rigid control. Drifting, it turns out, means allowing yourself to experience the pain and move on, means something other than letting your pain control you.  
  
Raleigh talks about controlling it, and you wonder about the dark things locked away in his heart. In his mind, in his heart. The things you saw in brief flashes across your vision. The things you felt and heard. Oh, fear -- panic, too -- all familiar ghosts.   
  
But it is the way Stacker looks at you. You have never felt such a heaviness hit you in your entire life - the weight of disappointing him, the weight of failing a minor god, the weight of space.  
  
(And you have tried, and you have failed. Stacker, right again. So you will gather up your papers and your notes and you will return to observing other fighters fight. You will show up to the meetings and you will be diligent. The cause is still your cause, even if you can't bloody your knuckles and feel the gravity of a body knocking into the ground.

Your hand shakes when you hold your pencil, but that's normal. Your fingers curl around the pencil, and confuses it for a weapon. Maybe that's normal. It's too light on the wrist. You need heft. You expect the weight of a sword, full and round, and you roll your wrist before you begin writing.  
  
You have tried, and you have failed. There is still work to do. There is always work to do.)  
  
-  
  
Raleigh stands at your door, and says _you don't have to just obey him_.  
  
You want to ask him how a man can live a life without loyalty, how a man can live a life without deferring to the knowledge that there is something greater, that a love is worth something greater than your defiance. That trust demands this, and that does not make you weak or carve you hollow.  
  
 _it's not obedience_ , you answer, and you wonder if a man who has saved so many lives can understand the debt that comes with being saved. If a man who continues to fight for the rest of the world can understand the weight of being patient and just watching as the world around you collapses to pieces.  
  
After all, the world remains everybody else's world, fighters or not. The world was still yours when you were cowering in the streets; the city was still your city; no matter how much you willed it so, you could not defend it with your own small fists, with your own body.  
  
No matter how much you wished. You want to know if he can understand. So, you try: _it's respect._  
  
-  
  
And when you are in the suit the second time and the third, when the weight of it grows familiar, when you clench your fist and the giant machine does the same, part of you curls at the notion. You had expected… not more, but something different. You had expected something greater in the blood. Less fear. More preparation.  
  
Still, there are other things you could not have anticipated. The fullness in your head and Raleigh's voice, Raleigh's presence, dirtying everything like smudging fingerprints on clean glasses, and part of you knows that you will never be able to strip those clean again. (Part of you wonders if you would ever want to.) There is the smooth tone of his voice, the even rhythm, as you move together, and the noise of the machine follows like a heartbeat, a two-beat noise of squealing metal and joints before the resounding footstep echoes across the sea bed.  
  
And there are things even Stacker did not tell you about battle. The way your blood makes everything seem too present, the noise of it drowning everything out, the way the inside of the machine can spark from the blows sustained; Raleigh is in your head; Raleigh whispers, Raleigh groans, Raleigh feels the blows and you feel them too --  
  
But now you are heavy; now you are a soldier; now you can throw your weight against the world and hear the echoes of a landing blow.  
  
-

There is a moment in the battle when the sparks are coming too frequently, when the computer is shouting warnings, when you feel Raleigh's panic in your own head and part of you knows that you are going to die on the ocean floor staring into the open gullet of an acid-spitting monster.  
  
And fear aside, isn't that fine? Fear aside, what else is there to you than this --   
  
You have always wanted to peer into the face of the monster, to see the ugly twisted face of the evil that tore your home apart, that tore through your people and your family and left you alone. You have wanted to see it destroyed the way you were destroyed. (But you were reconstructed, like your city; you rose again; you are not a thing to be permanently defeated, and isn't that strength? And couldn't that be strength?)  
  
The monster will have you the way it has everyone else. The monster will defeat you the way you have been defeated before. (You should be used to it by now, shouldn't you? The weak become used to defeat; the warriors become used to blood in the mouth; and the victors? Well, the victors often are combinations of the two.)  
  
You look into the face of the monster, and you turn and catch Raleigh's profile (and at least you will have this, to die in the midst of battle with a capable partner; to die, and know that you will have died fighting), and the air is getting thin now.  
  
Raleigh says your name. Once. Twice.  
  
The air is getting thin, and you can hear your mother's singing.  
  
 _mother, i am coming, i am coming, i am here_  
  
-  
  
There is an end. There is a beginning. It follows that way, doesn't it?  
  
Your pod bursts open and your first gasp of air is sharp salt on the tongue and a spray of seawater, and -- alone again. But you can still feel the fight going on in your head, can still hear the noise of battle, the roar of crushing metal, and where is he? What has Raleigh done without you?  
  
There is a moment of waiting, and your heart thuds hard in your chest. Oh, to lose another person. To lose a co-pilot --  
  
You have waited before. You swallow the fear. You count.  
  
(And after, when his pod is up and his body is still, so still, you crawl over and you cradle him in your arms because what else can you do? Oh, the time for fighting has passed; the time for being a warrior has gone, and now you are a scared little girl holding something else you have lost to this war; you are scared, and you are alone again, and the tide buoys you up and over, up and over, until you feel you will never be able to be anything other than adrift again.  
  
A little girl lost on the sea. Lost to sea. Lost.)  
  
-  
  
He speaks, and you nearly jump. He speaks; he is alive; he laughs against your shoulder and you feel the vibrations echo along your own body. Just like drifting. His skin is still cool to the touch, but you hold him against your body like an anchor (and now you are a thing that anchors others; now you are an anchor holding fast to the sea floor; now you have weight) and feel the change in his temperature as best you can with your own skin.  
  
He speaks and you can hear the noise of your own laugh, and you had forgotten that you could still - that with so much lost, joy still finds a way out of you. The ocean carries you. The salt lingers in the air and you taste the sea and you remember an island; you remember your home; you remember standing on the shore and listening to the roar of the waves and the feel of the sand grains beneath your feet.  
  
This was your city; this was your home; this was your world.  
  
You fought for it once. More than once. You fought, and maybe this time, you will have finally proven that you belong; that you deserve the weight of the sword; that you can bear the weight of everything the title means.   
  
You fought. You remain.

You cleave a monster in two and avenge your family; you feel the warmth of spirits ghosting along your forearm; you feel the burden of someone else sharing your memories; the monster is cloven in two; the monster is halved; you are holding the sword; the sword is yours.  
  
The sword is yours, and your throat is hoarse from shouting, but vengeance, vengeance --  
  
You have finally tasted a victory and it is salt and blood and the sea, and the roar of someone else's triumph in your head.  
  
The child has chased the fear back down the alley, out of the street, and off of her home. The child stands and refuses to cow to anything that assumes it is greater than anything she is capable of.  
  
The child becomes a giant; the giant fights; the giant wins.


End file.
